Thursday, November 28, 2013

The Annual Thanksgiving Post

For the sixth seventh year in a row... If the Wall Street Journal
has been running the same piece since 1961 I figure I can get by with
re-runs, too. I'm not quite as good as they are, though. But
seriously: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, Gentle Reader. I’m going to be lazy today and re-run what I said last year (in part...there was more), mainly coz (a) it’s all true and (b) I’m fresh out of original i-deers. So…from Turkey-Day-2006:

Of
all the things I’m thankful for on this day…family, friends,
reasonable health… I thank God most of all for making me an American.
Most all of the good things in my life begin and end with that one
single fact.

You could do much worse today than read the editorial the WSJ has published every Thanksgiving since 1961. An excerpt:

We
can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain
the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without
benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the
mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing
than the abundance of the earth.

And
we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from
Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then
we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

As true today as it was back in 1961.

The images come from Thanksgiving Corner, which has a great collection of Thanksgiving wallpaper (ed: the site is apparently dead now). Normally I'd only post a single topical image, but I was so taken with the second image that I had to post it. Shades of Ben Franklin, and all that.

We had 27 people here for Thanksgiving. It went off without a hitch. The meal was tasty and the company fun. You would think that I would just want to kick back and hang here at the house today. But I have been in this house since Tuesday - cleaning and cooking and picking up after people. I'm thinking I ready to blow this joint.